out of a fighter

If a citizen of any nation is touched let alone killed, the governing authorities of the concerned citizen make their presence felt loud and clear. In our country, no matter how hard one tries to prove his patriotism, love for nation etc, he either is outcasted as a jingoist, a fanatic or a terrorist. It is sad we have got ourselves ruled by those silent puppets who talk diplomacy. A community gets no justice even after 29 yrs; a powerful nation sets up its tents, throws attitude; an Indian prisoner beaten, murdered; women at large raped.

Too many lives at stake, too many sentiments crushed. What we get in return is mouthful of POLITICS.

With a poor front, the rest of the world is at an advantage.

dalbir Kaur, (pic courtesy: google images)

I have been kind of getting drawn towards this woman Dalbir Kaur (Sarabjit Singh's sister) for the sheer courage she displayed. The undaunted voice, the strength of an individual to voice her resentment, her grievances for the failure in handling her brother's case and the other Indian prisoners in Pakistan in getting him back and many more sharing a similar kind of status, to the country. After his death, a different language had echoed for a while. The governing party appeared to have arrested the strength she holds. Call it her innocence or the apt move of the regime, in both cases there is a loss of a nationalist.

The outcry now is louder than ever before. And perhaps it stands justified. There has always been a callousness or shall we call it the political attempt of pushing behind an issue for some appropriate time and never getting its due hearing until its lid bursts open.

Sarabjit Singh (pic courtesy: google images)

It is possibly the lack of option which compels us to recycle the same band of corrupt people into the pedestal. The submissive, the meek, the self-centric few continue to become puissant. Between the bigger controversies and bitter scams a laid back nation is let down constantly by each govt voted in. 

The country's self esteem at stake. The game of chor police (thief-cop)continues inside-out of parliament.

With each movement (-likes of Anna movement)a hope flickers. Probably there could be a better system at rise and each time one  is disillusioned. In India hope survives till its gestation period.

Meanwhile, I am waiting to read more of Dalbir Kaur's interviews and also keeping a close watch at several awards which would soon be decorating her; pushing, coloring a political figure out of a fighter. 


********************************************************************************************************

Where is home, away from home…

For some of us who are lifelong jugglers, moving from one place to another confront a world if not hostile a little antagonistic for sure. While mingling with the host community, most migrants go through some kind of alienation, more or less the similar kind of otherness.

The resistance can be from both parties, the host and the migrants or either of them.

Today, retirement from work place settles us. The young are on a constant move: the migratory birds. Better opportunity, better life calls the shot. This call brings with it several tests, with few rewards, sometimes a lot of pain. Most youngsters have learnt to flow with the stream. Very few, go through self imposed isolation. (On one hand while we like to believe that we are global citizens, we tightly hold our small little pieces of perceived identity close to us)

I have been travelling all along.

During my growing up days my father being a Govt. employee went through numerous transfers. So we got to see a lot of the world we had to constantly struggle to make our own. Then came a time when my father decided upon stationing the family while he toured around with his transfer orders. We settled in a place I was born in. That became my native, so did it for the other members. We are a small family of four. But each one of us was born in different parts of the country. Only I benefited living in my birth place. 

If today I ask my family members to shift from my birth place (I have a decade back left the place), the simple straight unanimous chorus would be a loud “NO”. Reasons are too many. Even if that is not our native, we were migrants. My father happened to be there because of his uncle, my mother and their two children for him. But the place has grown within. The local tribe takes away the cake.  Educated, soft-spoken, their impromptu smile sets them apart from the rest of 634 indigenous groups recognized in India. The English climate too becomes a strong reason.

From the local taxi drivers to the kong (an honorific for the Khasi ladies) selling betel nut, each one of them would greet you with an easy smile. You might not know the language and they not yours but the language of smile and the response to a greet melts one. A total stranger greeting the other from the opposite side would always bear a response. Such was my birth place.

I am talking about Shillong and its aborigines.

We have grown up in the sharp divide between the ‘them’ and the ‘us’. The antagonism between the natives and the settlers date back far before my father’s birth. Political divide the powerful reason. We learnt to rest this divide under the carpet. In schools, colleges, market, locality we spoke about everything but the dissever. In between though competition of throwing the best banters continued. I personally never experienced such exchanges nor was I a witness to such splashes. Stories from friends’ friends, friends’ brothers, drew close a house warm-up evening.

There were positive curfews we grew up with; positive meant lot of TV watching, cricket playing, catching up with neighbors, sharing delicious meals, paving secret ways through one’s kitchen garden to another’s! Most children born and living between1960-2000 grew up with these positive bandhs and curfews. There were troubles; there were murders, the usual bloodshed: the natives vs the settlers (mostly Bengalis, Biharis and Nepalis). All who bossed around were the local students’ union. The govt. invariably gave in to their demands. Deep inside we always wished otherwise for the sheer disappointment of losing a long vacation. Resistance from the govt. meant longer strikes, longer breaks from time-tabled studies.

I still recollect how chilling it was to walk all by myself holding my younger sibling after we were dropped by our school bus in a deserted city which suddenly went through curfew. Everyone in the broad day light had reached home, since we studied in an outskirt school and travelled to a no-outsider zone Mawlai, invariably travelling out of Mawlai took a long hour and half to reach home. The sound of my naughty boy shoe still, reverberates.

More than fear it was sheer thrill of being in command of the situation that made the moment special. On reaching our locality, some local boys applauded my courage. Felt good, when my parents took a sigh of relief and said they were in panic of waiting for our safe return. The local goons had been monitoring each outsider’s house. Such was the fear of growing up in an acknowledged disturbed region.

It is, I am told a different place now.

Today, in a free world where we move in& out of our homes at any time, celebrate Indian festivals makes us feel good. Nightlife was beyond the boundary of imagination in Shillong those days. Days wrapped up by 6 p.m. By dusk most people deserted the streets. Nights certainly weren’t fun at all. The TV volume too had to be very low, and we huddled close to the TV sets. It was only sleeping & studying we managed to do. Childhood fizzled out under blankets.

But, these are not all. There has been curfew-free, politically peaceful time when we caught up with our neighbors, friends. Shillong had all the right elements for making a world-denizen. From discussion on books to enjoying listening to rock bands, from cultural festivals to All Souls’ Day procession: we had real quality time. Great academicians to poets, from Lou Majaw to Writers’ meet : Shillong has always been at the helm of such activities in spite of the disturbances. We grew up fairly well. Well enough to face a world geographically, literally known to us.

Standing alone in a place that faces the Arabian Sea in its west, the being finds it pretty challenging now more than often to face a crowd who has enjoyed ‘freedom’ to the fullest. All that my birth place nurtured me with most often perspires through the rough brows of the people I have to be now, a part of. A greet today is received with remarks like, that’s not Indian (!). In India we aren’t formal. In India there is no privacy, etc etc.

Looks like I come from a different planet. All the niceties I have brought in from my birth place fail me when I am all out to melt, all out to discover oneness.

It’s nice to hear phrases like ‘a home away from home’, I am out to discover…

______________________________________________________________________________________

Bengal-Ground Zero

Not so long ago, when I was growing up in Shillong(Meghalaya), Kolkata, WB was heard to be a brobdingnagian city with spread out arms. It had huge Anglican churches, schools, reputed colleges, libraries, pandemic roads one would likely get lost if crowd was in mood to sway you. I remember pleading my dad to handcuff me whenever he took me there. I was petrified of that place.

Nothing much has changed from thereon. Today, it is my hubby who literally handcuffs me as we trod across the lanes of Kolkata (if I am blessed to walk).

Transfer to Kolkata is showing us different layers of life and almost forces on us to see the other side of human face.

This city of joy is for sure joyful in the eyes of many my close friends who have claimed to love it for being the centre of culture, heritage, literature, art, food and have gone all gaga over it. Yes, independently, such claims go unrifled. Ignore all those that happen to your car when your neighbor teaches his kid to scratch on it. Turn a deaf ear to the day long political lectures rattling from the loudspeakers. Narrow lanes are not a problem at all if one enjoys human touches! Forget your vehicle; you’ll come back adorning it with paan stains. The neighborhood shopkeeper refuses to give you the grocery because someday you might have purchased something else from the other one who is affiliated to the opposing party.

Politics, politics and drum full of it is in the air.

Driving 4/5hours away from the state capital: one would instantly understand why Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen or any art director’s dream location ends up being Bengal& outskirts of it. Deep forests, palm trees, dirt tracks, oodles of water bodies ( pukur) and spread out fields. Women folks draped in traditionally 9mtrs saris. Picturesque! Handpumps still in use. The wells still on the main road and women folks just out from perfect movie scenes form queues and carry water pots on their hips and heads. Any photographers, movie makers dream place. Aha!

As night falls, one understands and confronts darkness. One wonders if one traveled through a time warp. No electricity, no poles in sight. Electricity supply from generator comes at a premium: a bleak possibility across large tracts of rural Bengal. The sound of vehicle brings out people from their warm hideouts. Sound of night insects, crickets, animals haunts as one stands wondering to find a way out.

Having met a father who fell on my knees howling and cheeks wet, I was astounded for a minute before the movie shot. His son was killed by unidentified men and his body immediately fuelled political machinations. In death a village boy attained martyrdom. The parents denied the last rite.

Sunk in tears, they sat silently at the threshold of their mud house, as the eerie silence gnawed at their very being.

The noise of silence struck from all around. Fear propelled denial of information when one looks for them. The village assumes a dumb look. No one knew them when we didn’t.

As they begin to talk in inaudible voices, from nowhere a crowd gathers. Threatened and curious eyes greet us with looks of a cornered lamb. Wolves lurk behind. We had to move. Move quick before the dark gets darker. And so we did. Speeding out of the dirt track for almost an hour till we reached the pitched road, we carried along the silence of the grave. Uneasiness loomed large. Words in Jangalmahal travel fast… faster than us…

Second fear was to cross the infamous Jhitka forest. Yes, life granted. We pinched ourselves to believe we were breathing, reached human habitation. Grabbed fresh air, refueled and in the darkness of the wintry night the hamlet left behind to settle down and whisk out of sight as the dusts covered the scenes and we wheeled our out.

India then came to me in amazing form. It was lost in all its glitz and glamour, malls and marketed monuments. All the wall breaking pronouncements have fallen off. These were places 21 centuries behind. The hamlets we see from the windows of moving vehicles remain the same. For some reasons, Peepli live just gets life for few seconds and then sidelined from the mainstream. What happens to hundreds, thousands of Peepli’s, no one wastes a wink. Poverty tourism of the scion continues as Kalavati’s son in law in Vidarbha kills himself for debt. Dimpled youth icon still draws huge crowd in colleges. India indeed shines.

Does it really make a sense to diary this account or for that matter does any news piece make a difference? Somewhere, somehow a little change may follow. Hope can only ring aloud.

*************************************************